


scarlelily

by JazzRaft



Series: Bouquet [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-11 21:37:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10474974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: Nyx can always find his way home.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nicrt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicrt/gifts).



> happy birthday, nicrt! thanks for inciting the madness~ hope you have a wonderful day! :D

“If I knew I was going to be missed this much, I would have stayed away longer,” Nyx laughed.

“Don’t even _joke_ ,” Noctis whined, assaulting him with kisses.

The closer they became, the longer the missions seemed to feel. It was worse for Noctis, having to wait behind. Out on the field, it was easy for Nyx to distract himself on the task at hand enough that he could forget how badly he missed Noctis when he was away. When a battle was won and he allowed himself to remember his favorite distraction, victory was made all the more rewarding. The ache in his bones was always contented by the sight of that smile he could always rely on waiting for him in the secret coves of the Citadel.

Noctis got positively _voracious_ in the time Nyx spent beyond the Wall. The distance only exacerbated the hunger, until Noctis was shoved to the edge of starving for the need of Nyx. The prince _pounced_ on him when they finally met in the back gardens of the Citadel, sending them both tumbling down into the flower beds where Noctis then proceeded to attack his lips as viciously as any daemon.

It felt so good to feel those fingers in his hair again, twirling through his braids, itching across the shaved sides, and gliding down to soothe circles into the back of his neck. And _that mouth_ , so warm and wanting and _pleading_ that Nyx was actually there. That Noctis could prove it to himself by tasting him like this, in an endless barrage of those sweet lips against his and murmuring even sweeter affections. The tenderness of his touches gradually began to deepen, slow, and ignite a little more earnestly across Nyx’s skin. The words shifted to a different tone of sweetness and his mouth traveled low down his neck.

“I really want to take you up on that, baby,” Nyx groaned, wincing at a little shot of pain in his hip when Noct’s knee brushed against it. “But you’re sitting on a pretty bitchy fracture.”

“What, you’re _hurt_?”

Noctis immediately scrambled off of him, careful to avoid the injury in question. Worry stained across his pretty blue eyes and Nyx knew it was cruel to laugh, but it was such a welcome sight after the unaffected stares of the field medics.

“Hey now, don’t go too far,” he chuckled, hooking an arm around Noct’s shoulders and pressing him to his side.

“I’m sorry,” Noctis fretted, fingers dancing feather-light over Nyx’s hip in apology. “How bad is it?”

Nyx snorted. “Not bad enough for medical leave means not bad at all. Got enough worries in that pretty little head of yours, don’t add me to them.”

He kissed his forehead. Noctis snuggled into the crook of his arm, nudging his head beneath Nyx’s chin like an adoring house-cat.

“You’re all I worry about lately,” he murmured, playing idly with one of the braids resting along Nyx’s neck. “I know it’s your job and you’re really good at it and everything, but still… I like you here. Where I know you’re safe.”

Nyx was still getting used to that – having someone who wanted him to come home. Who loved him enough to care whether he lived or died. Who would mourn him far deeper than a subdued toast at the bar. His friends in the glaive had all made a pact. That they wouldn’t let one of their deaths ruin the rest of them. That they would promise to carry on in their honor. A round of whiskeys to toast the life of the deceased, a good cry for the night, and then a determined march back into the field the next day.

Noctis was different. Noctis was a new kind of care that Nyx never had before. He wasn’t a soldier. He wasn’t resigned to the inevitability of death like the rest of them. He was a prince. Nyx’s little king. And he commanded without a single order that Nyx always return to him. And Nyx always did.

Noctis sighed against his throat as Nyx’s fingers teased through his hair, a feeling that the both of them had desperately missed. Weeks’ worth of anxiety filtered past Noctis’s lips in that breath and he sunk himself as close to Nyx’s side as he could get, draping one arm across his chest while the other continued toying with his braid. Nyx anchored himself against Noctis by retracing the trails he remembered making in his soft hair. He brought himself back home with every strand that slid like silk between his fingers.

Noctis was a home that Nyx hadn’t had in a long time. Something worth returning to. He looked down at the raven head tucked against his neck, watched the turn of his own fingers through those thick locks. And beyond that vision of utter serenity, Nyx smiled at the little patch of flowers growing just within arm’s reach. He dragged his hand from the delicate softness of Noct’s hair, earning a pained whimper from the prince for the absence. Nyx plucked one of the small red blooms and spun the stem between his fingers. He tickled the petals along Noct’s cheek.

“What are you doing?” the prince laughed, glancing between the narrow red petals and Nyx’s eyes.

“Asking permission,” Nyx said.

“To?”

“Make you mine.”

Noctis shifted a little, giving Nyx’s braid a little tug as he pouted up at him. “Am I not already?”

“Course you are,” Nyx assured him, already separating Noctis’s hair into three bunches.

“Then _what_ are you doing to my hair?” Noctis mumbled against his throat, the position of Nyx’s arms around his head muffling his face.

“This little guy used to grow back home,” Nyx explained, carefully braiding Noct’s hair around the flower’s stem. “The prettiest weed in all of Galahd. Stubborn little sucker, too. Surprised the groundskeeper hasn’t killed it yet. Gardeners would spend entire summers trying to fight these things off, but the bastards just kept on comin’. We used to refer to them as Red Gremlins, but they actually have a way prettier name: scarlelilies.”

“Mm, that is prettier,” Noctis hummed, eyes lulled shut as Nyx worked and talked and warmed him with his presence.

“While they were a bitch for farmers, all the healers couldn’t get enough of them. They could use these things in _anything._ Potions, salves, teas, you name it. We even had a village witch that my sister loved to hang around with. She taught Sellie all sorts of things you could use these flowers for. From soaps to spells, you name it, scarlelilies can do it.”

“Are you casting a spell on me right now?” Noctis chuckled, barely turning his face up to grin at him so as not to interrupt his fingers in his hair.

“Oh, I think I’ve had you under my spell since way before now,” Nyx purred.

Although, if either of them was catching the other in a spell, it was Noctis. Those eyes had enthralled Nyx since the first time he’d gazed into them, and he’d been spellbound ever since. Hard not to be hypnotized by them now, looking up at him from beneath those messy bangs with such a delectable little glint of mischief. Hip fracture be damned, if Noctis wasn’t careful, Nyx might just roll him over and take him right there, christening the new mark Nyx was making in his hair.

“Well, if you’re not weaving a hex on me,” Noctis said, rubbing the end of Nyx’s own braid between thumb and forefinger. “What are you doing?”

“There’s an old folktale about these flowers in Galahd. The reason they’re so determined to cover the whole damn countryside, and why they’re such an obnoxious shade of red. It’s said that in the middle of the day when the sun’s at its highest, sailors could see Galahd from their decks from how bright the scarlelilies were in the daylight. It was their way of finding home.”

Nyx finished threading the flower through his hair, leaving a neat, thin braid with a tiny red lily blooming from the end. “Now I’ll be able to find my way back to you, too.”

A light blush dusted Noctis’s cheeks. He’d deny it to the astral realm, but the prince was a hopeless romantic. He’d grown up on stupid stories like these. They’d captivated him throughout all of his childhood, leaving imprints of fantasy deep in his bones that he was secretly desperate to believe. He burrowed his face into Nyx’s shoulder to hide that embarrassingly charmed look on his face.

“You’re such a dork,” he mumbled.

“A beauty from home for my beauty at home,” Nyx said with wistful exaggeration.

Noctis laughed and Nyx didn’t miss the tantalized slip of the prince’s leg up his own, gratified by the cheesy line. Nyx hugged his arm back around his shoulders, squeezing him to his side and nuzzling his face into Noct’s hair. He brushed lazy kisses along the dark braid, already memorizing the new path it created in this space that Nyx had already claimed, but never marked as his own.

“You’re mine,” he whispered into his hair. “My love. My home.”


End file.
